Betty Roby, then recently divorced, was happy living in Mississippi, but her company lost the contract she worked on and she had to scramble. She landed a job in the Atlanta area and scouted out school systems for her 5-year-old son, Bradley.

She settled in Georgia’s suburban Gwinnett County.

“The area I moved to initially was an area I could afford,” Betty Roby said from her home in Suwanee.

“But I know the high school system wasn’t exactly what I wanted for Brad,” she said. “So my plan was to make sure that by the time that he was graduating from the eighth grade, I would move to another school district that would have a better high school for him. Education means everything to me. That’s what my parents taught me. I went to school, got a college degree, got a great job. I wanted him to have that opportunity.”

On Friday at the Broncos’ Dove Valley headquarters, Ohio State cornerback Bradley Roby was introduced as Denver’s first-round draft pick. His mother, who works for the Atlanta-area corporate office of Bank of America, had been with him in New York the previous few days before going home as Bradley came to Denver.

At one point during his whirlwind day, Roby looked back on his mother’s decision to move when he was about to enter high school as one of the pivotal events of his life. He would have gone to Berkmar High School in Lilburn, and his mother moved to Suwanee to enable him to attend Peachtree Ridge High.

“My mom looked at the high school I was going to go to, and it was a high school that had a lot of trouble and gang violence and fights, and academics weren’t good,” Roby said. “Sports weren’t that good. My best friend was actually going to Peachtree Ridge, and (Betty) was like, ‘Do you want to go there?’ I was like, ‘No, I don’t want to go there. I don’t want to leave my friends.’ But she said, ‘No this is a better decision for you.’ “

At Peachtree Ridge, Bradley maintained a 3.85 grade-point average and posted excellent SAT and ACT scores. That, coupled with his starring role as a football wide receiver for the powerhouse Peachtree Ridge Lions, drew him early recruiting interest from such schools as Vanderbilt. He played for Lions coach Bill Ballard, who sat him down before his senior season and suggested his future might be brighter as a defensive back.

After initially saying he was planning to sign a national letter of intent with Vanderbilt to play receiver, he heard from a second wave recruiting him as a defensive back and eventually had to tell Vanderbilt coach Bobby Johnson he would head to Ohio State instead.

After redshirting his first year, Roby started every game the next three seasons and was a first-team all-Big Ten choice as a sophomore and a junior. But then came the “incidents.”

One was a July 21, 2013, altercation at a bar in Bloomington, Ind. Video later showed it involved bouncers acting far more aggressively than Roby. Charges against Roby were dropped, but Ohio State coach Urban Meyer suspended Roby for the season opener against Buffalo.

On April 29, he pleaded guilty in Columbus to physical control of a motor vehicle while under the influence of drugs or alcohol. That came nine days after a 911 caller told police a driver “had almost hit some kids on a sidewalk” and was passed out in a car. A citation for the incident said Roby’s blood-alcohol level in the breath test was measured as 0.008 percent, or one-tenth the level considered illegal for a driver. His agent, Michael Perrett, said the guilty plea to the lesser charge was to bring “closure” to the incident before the draft.

On the night of the draft, Broncos executive John Elway acknowledged that the character questions were involved in Roby still being available at the 31st slot in the first round.

“Nothing against you guys, but the people in Columbus, they wait for something like that,” Roby said. “They wait for a guy to get arrested so they can put the whole world on that. … I was like, ‘Wow, I just gave you four years of my life and this is what you’re going to do, take a story and run with it and not post all the facts?’ I think I was kind of treated unfairly. All you have is your reputation and your name, and if they’re killing your name, you have to defend yourselves sometimes.”

Good outweighs bad

His high school coach, Ballard, said the Broncos aren’t adding a problem child.

“No, sir,” Ballard declared. “He’s very well grounded. His mom is a wonderful lady. Bradley was a straight arrow in high school completely. Now, you’re going to experiment a little as a kid. There’s going to be some things you go through. You have to grow up once you get a little freedom and that kind of thing, and that’s what you see in what happened with Bradley. I think he will come back to how he was raised as a man as he grows up. … I think they’re getting a great kid and a great player.”

Kerry Coombs was Roby’s cornerbacks coach at Ohio State.

“I don’t think he has character issues,” Coombs said. “I don’t think he has bad character. I think he’s made mistakes, and that’s unfortunate. I wish he’d never done that, but it’s just like I wish women or children or anyone else who have made mistakes — including myself — hadn’t made them. … He’s very intelligent. He’s a highly competitive, self-confident young man who has a vision for a future.”

And this from his mother about the “character issues” emphasis: “It bothers me, because Bradley is a great child. I would not be saying that if he wasn’t a great child. It bothers me that the media sensationalizes or overstates or overreports stuff just to sell papers or sell the story. If my child made a mistake, if he did something wrong, I don’t have a problem with that, because I have always been strict on Bradley.

“What I do have a problem with is when you don’t tell the whole story, when you put a spin on it and when that story is on the Internet and people can click on it. Tell the whole story. So it does bother me that people think he’s a bad kid and think he’s a thug. He is far from being a thug. He is a very, very educated young man, so it does bother me. It really does.”

But now he’s a Bronco.

“I think Bradley’s going to flourish in this environment,” Betty Roby said. “I think this was the right pick for him. I really do. We make plans for ourselves, but sometimes God has a better plan for you. He might have wanted to go somewhere else (higher in the draft), but I feel deep down within that where he ended up was where he was supposed to be in the first place, to make sure that he’s successful.

“I see nothing but good things for him being with the Denver Broncos. They have a great organization, great management, a great locker room.

“They can help him mature and know how to be a great professional athlete. I am very grateful for them for giving my baby a chance.”

A graduate of Wheat Ridge High School and the University of Colorado, Terry Frei has been named a state's sportswriter of the year six times -- three times each in Oregon and Colorado. He mainly covers college football and hockey for The Post. He's the author of seven books, including the novel "Olympic Affair" about Colorado's Glenn Morris, the 1936 Olympic decathlon champion.

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